Marriage in Australia: A timeline of how love and law have changed in 130 years

Adapted from Kathy Gollan for Earshot
Updated Mon 17 Apr 2017, 12:58 PM AEST

• June 10, 1884	Married women can own property
  	Victoria becomes the first Australian colony to pass legislation allowing married women the right to own property, in the wake of the UK Parliament passing the Married Women’s Property Act.

• June 1, 1918	Laws control Aboriginal marriage
  	The Aboriginals Ordinance 1918 restricts marriage between Indigenous women and non-Indigenous men in the Northern Territory. There were also state laws in place to control marriage for Indigenous Australians.

• November 16, 1942	Marriage age raised
  	Tasmania passes a law to raise the minimum age of marriage from 12 for women and 14 for men to 16 and 18 respectively. Other states follow.

• November 9, 1961	Australia’s first Marriage Act
  	The Marriage Act 1961 makes marriage law uniform across the country and sets the minimum marriageable age as 18. It does not, however, formalise a definition of marriage.

• November 18, 1966	‘Marriage bar’ abolished
  	The bar on employment of married women in the Commonwealth Public Service is abolished. Introduced at the beginning of the 1900s, the “marriage bar” was intended to keep women from “stealing” men’s jobs and also to boost the birth rate. It meant many women kept their marriages a secret.

• July 19, 1973	First civil celebrant appointed
  	Civil celebrancy is formally established in Australia by the Commonwealth Attorney General, Lionel Murphy, despite widespread opposition. Murphy appoints a 26-year-old woman, Lois D’Arcy, as the first independent civil marriage celebrant.

• June 12, 1975	No-fault divorce
  	The Family Law Act 1975 establishes the principle of no-fault divorce, with 12 months separation being sufficient to prove breakdown of the marriage (prior to that, some form of wrongdoing by either party had to be proved). In the wake of the act, the divorce rate temporarily skyrockets.

• April 1, 2001	Netherlands legalises same-sex marriage
  	The Netherlands becomes the first country to extend marriage laws to include same-sex couples.

• August 16, 2004	Marriage Act amended
  	Under prime minister John Howard, the Marriage Act is amended to add the following definition: “Marriage means the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.”

• March 1, 2009	De facto status
  	De facto relationships are granted similar rights to married couples. In some States a couple needs to have lived together for a minimum period before they can claim de facto status.

• November 1, 2016	Push for same-sex marriage plebiscite defeated
  	In November, the Australian government’s push for a plebiscite on same-sex marriage is defeated in the Senate.

• September 7, 2017
  	Postal vote distributed to all voting-age Australian’s for them to vote “yes” or “no” as to whether Australia should allow Same-Sex Marriage. The Outcome will be published in November 2017.